One Day At A Time
by soccermonkey413
Summary: Just get through today." That is the motto of Dakota, Frank, Elizabeth, Hazel and Genevieve. To just get through one day after the next, to make it through and hope that somehow tomorrow will be better. But what they don't know is that sometimes places never get better. Sometimes you have to leave them behind.
1. Chapter 1

A Lab Rats Short Story

One Day At A Time

Chapter 1 (Dakota's P.O.V.)

**Dakota**

"Faster! Push yourselves! We'll keep at this all night if we have to!" Douglas yelled angrily as he patrolled the edge of the arena, watching the bionic children spar.

_We _have_ been going at it all night!_ Thought Dakota furiously. But she didn't dare say it out loud. Last time Elizabeth had talked back, she hadn't gotten dinner for a week, and their food portions were small enough as it was. Zeroing her focus back in on her match against Hazel, she tucked into a roll, throwing herself out of the way of a punch that nearly hit her in the face. Taking a shaky breath as she backed up, the nine year old bent her knees and propelled herself into the air. Her flight kicked in and she hovered a few feet off the ground, out of Hazel's reach. As it always did after a few moments airborne, her flight started to glitch and she began shaking, looking more like a giant out of control fly than a nine-year-old girl. Risking a glance to the other side of the room, she saw her siblings fighting Gwen, two against one. In any other scenario the youngest girl by herself would've been at a disadvantage. But the seven year old had a hard mask on her face, born of being pushed harder than any of the others by Douglas. She ducked and weaved around Frank and Elizabeth, landing hits twice more than them, and receiving blows half as often.

A sudden wobble in her flight dropped her a foot, so that her feet were level with Hazel's head.

The girl charged and Dakota kicked her in the nose. Hazel crumpled like a rock, and Dakota hovered uncertainly. Hazel raised her face to look at the older girl, unshed tears glimmering in her eyes and blood covering her face, a mask of anger hard on her features.

Dakota's feet suddenly got heavier and she barely had time to feel the cold that came from Hazel's cytokinesis before she crashed into the ground. Hazel then slammed into her in a shoulder tackle, knocking her back into the wall. Sliding down with a moan, stars filled her vision and acting on instinct, she rolled out of the way as a foot slammed into where her chest just was.

A scream turned both her and Hazel's head and they saw Frank slumped against a wall and Genevieve on the floor, sporting a black eye, staring up at Elizabeth who was nursing an arm that appeared to be broken. Only her stare was hindered by the fact that there was a fifty-foot wall of fire in between the two.

"H!" Douglas yelled, anger seeping into his tone.

Obeying, the twin held out her hands and the flames turned yellow, then red, and than orange as Hazel coated the fire in her icy abilities, bathing the flames in a bucket of frost.

A klaxon sounded, and the rails around the high arena walls slammed down, allowing Douglas to jump down to join them. The children all froze, Genevieve and Elizabeth watching him in terror, while Dakota and Hazel attempted to commit murder with their eyeballs.

"I told you," the man growled. "I, _told_, you, never use your pyrokinesis outside specialized training!" By then he had reached Genevieve, and drawing back his arm he slapped her across the face.

With a savage yell, Hazel launched herself at the man, only to drop to the floor in pain as her muscles seized up and pain from her bionic chip worked its way through her entire nervous system.

Dakota watched, numbly. _No!_ she thought, suddenly scared. _No, you can't be numb! It's what he wants! Feel it! Get angry!_ Seeing Hazel's twitching body, and seeing Genevieve's own blood surround her on the floor, anger wasn't difficult to grab on to.

The numbness fled and was replaced by fury, and Dakota breathed freely again.

"Is everyone clear on what I expect?" Douglas asked coldly.

The four of them who were conscious nodded, albeit Gwen weakly.

"Good. Again! Same partners! Someone, wake up F." With that order, Douglas walked to the elevator and rode it up. As Elizabeth gently woke up their brother, Hazel walked over and helped her twin to her feet. Dakota stood and stared at them, wondering what time it was and how much longer they had to stand this for that day.

"Ten seconds!" Douglas yelled.

Quickly arranging in their groups, Hazel and Dakota got ready to face off. "Begin!"

Hazel was immediately on the offensive, just like always. If it were anyone else than she could use this to her advantage but Hazel didn't even give Dakota time to exploit the weakness she attacked so fast. Despite being two years older it was all Dakota could do to keep up as it was. Dakota couldn't say how long this went on for. She never could.

"Time!" Came the eventual cry.

The five of them collapsed in relief, breathing heavily, the sweat coming off their body enough to fill a lake.

Lake. Hmm. Dakota mused on that for a while, trying to paint pictures of one in her mind. She'd never _seen_ a lake, but she'd heard about them. They were bodies of water bigger than swimming pools, but smaller than oceans. Ever since she'd read about them she had wanted to see one.

"D!" A bark of the letter brought her out of her daydream. Focusing in on Douglas, she saw him glaring angrily at her. "If you were listening," he said through clenched teeth, "You'd know that you, E, F and H are supposed to clear the room. It's time for G's specialized training."

Exhaling slowly to show her frustration, she went and joined her friend and siblings at the door and walked through, barely pulling her ankle along before the gate slammed shut, nearly crushing her foot.

Sporting so many injuries they looked like a walking rainbow, the four of them trudged along wearily to the 'lounge'. At least that was what Douglas called it. They preferred to refer to it as their 'prison cell of semi-comfort'. Collapsing on the stone cold rock hard couches, Dakota let her eyelids drift shut, watching through her lashes as Hazel grimly set to her healing task. Her hands moved from her now fully intact face, to the gash in her arm, to the scrapes on her leg where Dakota had clawed at her.

"You going to be OK?" She questioned.

Hazel looked up, knowing who she was talking to and nodded. "Yeah. And don't worry about it. I'd rather take beatings from you in sparring than beatings from him for not trying."

Lifting up her shirt, her hands shifted from her now healed knee to the blossoming patch of yellow and green on her midsection where Dakota had nailed her in the ribs. The skin slowly softened and the colors faded back to normal, the bruise fixing itself back into her skin. Having finished on herself, she then moved over to the remote and flicked it on, giving them a view of Genevieve's training. Douglas said he had installed it to show them he wasn't giving her preferential treatment. But a few months ago Frank had discovered it was really a two-way camera: he was using it to spy on them.

Genevieve had been downright furious when this realization had been made. They'd been grounded for a week while the room had been rebuilt from the cinders she'd turned it into.

Turning her attention back to the monitor, Dakota watched as the seven year old dropped the gravity on five-ton blocks to next-to-nothing, and then keeping the gravity at that level use a second ability to hurl them across the room with her mind. Whatever the downsides were to their situation, Dakota was freakishly jealous that Genevieve could do that. But whenever she brought it up, the others were quick to remind her that she was the only one who could fly. This typically sparked debates over who had what ability and what they'd trade it for if they'd had choices in the matter.

A cool hand on her arm brought her back to earth and she nearly jumped out of her skin before realizing it was Hazel. She watched as the blood on her arm stopped flowing and the skin sealed up. Her hands shifted to Dakota's temple where the heel of Hazel's boot had clipped her, drawing blood. Once the head injury was taken care of and she could use her arm again, Hazel drew back, quickly walking over to Elizabeth. She and Gwen were the 'babies' of the group, being the youngest and most vulnerable. Elizabeth's face turned white and Dakota clenched her hands into a fist at her sister's pain as the bones in her arm rearranged themselves.

No matter what the arrangement, baby or not, whoever Genevieve's sparring partners were _always_ came off more the worse-for-wear in the practice matches. Dakota ruefully remembered the last time _she_ had attempted to take on the seven year old. Her knee still hurt sometimes from where the girl had crushed it.

A yell from the monitor sounded and Dakota opened her eyes and laughed to see Douglas dancing around the room, trying to put out the fire on his shirt. The laughter died in her throat however, when she realized what was coming next. Douglas was quick to punish Gwen whenever her pyrokinesis went out of control. He finally gained the presence of mind to tear the shirt off, before turning angry eyes on Genevieve. "Hazel," said Dakota quietly, warning in her voice.

Hazel turned from mending Elizabeth's split lip and saw Douglas advancing on Genevieve. Her hands clenched into fists and her eyes narrowed.

Douglas drew back a fist and hit her. Tears started forming in Hazel's eyes and Elizabeth began to sob as he wailed on Gwen over and over. Frank's molecular density began to glitch and he fell a few inches through the couch at regular interviews. Dakota clenched the armrest so hard it tore in half and tears ran in silent rivulets down Hazel's cheeks. But none of them could tear their eyes away from the screen.

Elizabeth screamed in anger and threw herself at the door over and over again, trying to make her way to her friend.

But all they could do was watch. All they could _ever_ do, was watch.

Dakota couldn't say how much time had passed. But eventually Douglas' training ended, as did the beatings, and Genevieve used super speed to be inside the room two seconds later.

Her legs gave out and Dakota quickly ran over, gently picking the sobbing girl up off the floor. "I tried, I really tried," she hiccupped, all of them unable to understand why Douglas seemed the most focused on Genevieve. Hazel walked over and Dakota wordlessly handed her over. It was bad enough for Dakota and her siblings to _see_ Genevieve like this. But with Gwen and Hazel's link, she could only imagine what it must be like for Hazel to actually have to _feel_ what her twin was going through.

As Hazel soundlessly set to work, quickly fixing her twin as fast as her ability would allow, a scowl worked its way across Dakota's swollen lip. "We have _got_ to get out of here," she muttered.

"Dakota! Shh!" Frank snapped, motioning to the monitor.

"What? He already knows we hate it here!" she snapped furiously.

"Remember the motto sis," said Elizabeth, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. Dakota relaxed into her little sister's touch, embarrassed that they were taking care of her, when _she_ should be taking care of _them_. "One day at a time. We just have to take it one day at a time."

Dakota nodded. And she kept on the face all the rest of the day, through the evening training session, through the meager portion of dinner, through their nightly ritual of imagining their parents, and all the way into their regenerative capsules. But when the four youngers were asleep, she closed her eyes and finally allowed herself to cry as she whispered into the darkness, "There's only so many days I can take."


	2. Chapter 2

A Lab Rats Short Story

One Day At A Time

Chapter 2 (Hazel's P.O.V.)

"Is it just me," Hazel asked Genevieve in one of their precious few moments of downtime, "Or are Dakota, Elizabeth and Frank glitching a lot more often than usual?"

"It's not just you," her twin replied. "I've been seeing it too."

As she spoke, Elizabeth suddenly started jerking and blurring all around the room as her super speed went out of control.

Hazel quickly held out her arms as Genevieve's empathy app automatically picked up the other girl's panic, overwhelming her twin and knocking her over. "I'm OK," she murmured. A crashing sound distracted them and the two girls saw Dakota suddenly smashed into the ceiling, obviously her flight, and Frank was halfway through the floor, probably his molecular density going out of control.

"Just don't tell Douglas," Hazel quickly muttered. "Otherwise he'll try and 'fix' them. And we all know how _that_ goes." The twins collectively shuddered as they remembered when he had nearly taken off Frank's shoulder last year when his glitching had been going out of control.

"Don't tell Douglas what?"

"Speak of the devil," Hazel muttered. Standing up she flashed him a daring smile. "Don't tell Douglas how much we hate his guts."

He glared at her but she didn't back down, staring back but finding herself somehow unable to blink.

A growl escaped their owner's throat. "Remember H. As impossible as this may seem, I'm doing everything I do to _protect_ you. Never forget that."

"Protect us from what?" The seven year old snapped. "Not having a high enough pain tolerance?"

"Hazel!" Genevieve snapped. "Not helping!"

Rolling his eyes, Douglas ran a hand through his ever-spiky hair and marched over to the other three.

Hazel noticed Genevieve staring at her strangely and scowled. "What?"

"You have a death wish don't you?"

"I didn't know you cared so much."

"Don't worry I don't. But chances are if he kills you he'll get a blood lust and take out the rest of us."

"Thanks!" 

"Don't mention it. I'll be here all week."

Before they could continue their bickering Hazel found herself slammed into by a speeding wall and fell flat on her face.

"Elizabeth!" she moaned, peeling herself up off the floor.

"Sorry!" her friend called, pushing herself off the wall as her glitch calmed down.

"OK. Time for glitching check up. Or as I like to call it: GCU," Douglas said smugly, as though he'd just thought of the most brilliant title.

The five of them groaned in unison, knowing what was coming up.

"G and H! You're up first!"

Looking at each other in exasperation, they walked over to perform all of their various bionics. There was a _tiny_ accident which involved Genevieve nearly removing her own eyebrows, but aside from that they were relatively non-incidental.

It was the other three she was worried about.

She and Genevieve stood over at the corner, and watched as they began performing one at a time. Dakota flew up and around the ceiling for a grand total of thirty seconds before her flight and heat vision began to glitch and lasers burned holes through the wall as she dropped down to the ground before jerking back up abruptly. After an extremely amusing — yet disturbing — fifteen seconds of this, she crashed into the ground hard enough to break her jaw. Hazel had broken enough jaws to know this for a fact.

Frank and Elizabeth weren't much better. Frank kept getting stuck halfway between the walls he was running through or falling through the floor, and his bionically enhanced instincts were all over the place. Elizabeth on the other hand, crashed into walls, randomly talked in different voices slash birdcalls, and the twins kept either bursting out into laughter, collapsing into sobs, or doubling over in crippling pain while Elizabeth's inflicting app went haywire.

"OK, you three: training therapy, now!"

Smiling at each other for the reprieve, the twins sat down and enjoyed their few minutes of relaxation.

But that relaxation quickly turned to terror as their friends began glitching every five seconds.

And then something terrible happened.

Elizabeth dropped to the ground, electrical shock currents running up and down her body in the form of blue lightning.

Frank doubled over, this morning's breakfast making a disgusting reappearance with a splattering sound to boot as he flickered in and out of semi-gaseous state: the most extreme case his molecular density could muster.

And Dakota dropped to the floor, rolling over and over in pain as she shot lasers all over the room, making the twins duck for cover.

Genevieve moaned and clutched her head as her empathy app began to glitch. Her emotions flowed over the link and Hazel clenched her jaw, forcing herself to ignore them and remain calm. "Genevieve. Sis. Talk to me. What's going on? What're they feeling?"

"Pain…" she whispered, tears pouring down her face. "Panic… fear… agony…"

Hazel rubbed small circles into her sister's back, wishing she could do more. Peeking over the top of the chair she saw doctors running in and hooking up the three to IV tubes and giving them CPR.

But from Genevieve's increasingly noisy sobs it wasn't going well. "Genevieve?" she whispered, as their friends' spasms intensified. "You may need to see this."

"No need." she whispered. "I can feel it. They're dying."

Hazel shook her head, refusing to believe it. "What're you talking about?"

"They're dying Hazel," Genevieve repeated, tears — now quietly — leaking their way down her face. "They're dying and there's not a stupid thing we can do about it."

PAGE BREAK

Hazel was still in shock. It kept playing through her mind over and over again. Had she not just been, barely an hour ago, exchanging witty remarks with Dakota? Had she not last night had Frank kiss her cheek good night? Had she not suggested to Elizabeth that Genevieve could help her with her super speed only that morning? It was unreal that they were gone. It was heartbreaking that they were dead.

Not to mention she was getting severely worried about Genevieve. She had _felt_ it when they died, literally _felt_ their life force slipping away until it was gone. That couldn't be healthy. And what had Hazel done while all this was happening? Sit there and cry. As this realization hit, Hazel made herself a promise. She would _never_ sit back and cry again. She would never shed another tear. Sadness makes you weak. If she hadn't been devastated while _it_ had been happening, maybe she could have saved them. Maybe she could've helped Genevieve more. It was decided. No more tears.

She couldn't afford them.

PAGE BREAK

Three weeks later, Hazel reflected, and she was still making good on her promise to not cry. That coupled with the fact that Genevieve was showing signs of recovery from experiencing the simultaneous deaths of three people had put her in a rare mood: happy. However, as was normally the case Douglas managed to crush it.

"What do you mean you're selling us?" Hazel demanded, her fork clattering onto her plate sounding abnormally loud in the silence that followed this remark.

"Exactly that. The auctions in two weeks so we'll be training extra hard until then, understand?"

"We're not second-hand couches you can just give away when you're sick of them," Hazel sneered.

"No, but I have been training you for the past seven years and need some money. You think hair like this comes cheap? The styling gel alone…" he began running his fingers through his hair reverently. Hazel looked over to Genevieve, intending to share a laugh, but her twin was silently staring at her plate of protein/carb packets.

"We leave in two weeks?" she asked, her voice sounding raw.

"Exactly," Douglas replied.

Genevieve raised red eyes from her plate to lock them onto him. "Will we be going together?"

"What?"

"Will we be going together?" she repeated. "Will we both go to the same person?"

"It depends on how much people are willing to spend on you. If they want both of you, you'll go together. If not, then you can say sayonara —" but he didn't get to finish because at that point the glasses all shattered and the table erupted into flames.

PAGE BREAK

_We'll be fine. Understand? We've had two weeks to figure this out and I'm positive that the escape plan will work._

Using the combined abilities of their twin telepathy and bionic link, the two girls were having a very intense mental conversation.

_But what if we can't?_ Genevieve replied with her eyes. _What if we never see each other again?_

_Relax. We're a package deal remember? I guarantee they'll want both of us, and even if they don't, we'll escape on the way there anyway. It'll be fine, trust me._

_I guess so._

_Good. So we're clear on the plan._

_Yeah, but… I'm scared Hazel. What if it _doesn't_ work?_

_It will work. It has too,_ Hazel silently insisted. _I love you._

A smile traced its way across her twins face as she whispered, "I love you too."

**AN**

**Hey guys! Sorry if that seemed pretty abrupt. Moving on: the next short story coming out will be released sometime this week, (November 2-November 8) and you can check my profile if you want a title/description, but it won't be up for two or three days. Happy 2 day late Halloween!**

**-soccermonkey413**


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